Philippines, Jamaica, Haiti, Kenya, Cambodia, Austria, Nosy Komba ... In the family of pilot deployments are asked Jamaica!

Mark Battley (Kenya), Bill Stelzer (Haiti & Nicaragua), Adam Holt (Haiti), Craig Perue (OLPC Jamaica), Quentin Peries Joly and Laura Reynal (OLPC France-Nosy Komba): Let's fly to Kingston!

Two schools, 115 XO-1.5, 2 servers schools, eight teachers, two neighborhoods, two atmospheres, six volunteers - four photographers ... Jamaican Brain Food Kept Us busy! Welcome to Jamaica!

So what looks like the deployment Jamaican?

Perue Craig and his fantastic team after the Mona School of Business of the famous University of the West Indies , have set up a deployment in two schools: Providence Methodist Basic School and August Town Primary.

These two schools are different and operate separately for now.

Dig a little to try to understand this environment, before diving into the details!

• Providence

A nursery school where children from 5 to 6 years have an XO. This represents a total of 70 computers. This small band of hyperactive is framed by a team of extraordinary teachers of amazing women, who have an iron will and an unfailing humor: two essential elements for managing maternal fiery!

Some did not know how to use the mouse, but at the end of the training sessions she thanked us and have declared to be "so proud to have learned new things, so proud to play a role in this project, so proud to know use a computer. "

Hope & Fears by teachers of Providence.

-Hopes: Ability to use the XOS be able to teach others, give all my students to complete a literacy, creating a fusion between the program and the machine.

-Fears: Failure, underestimate the potential of the child and the machine, losing patience, the XO is distraction, loss of control of the classroom, teachers as less gifted children.

Starting in Kingston, I knew from our regular skypes with the team that children using the XO in Providence were very young, I was expecting to see a massive use of games such as Maze, Implode and Record ...

Finally, we found children aged 5 very intelligent, who can write, read and grow using the XO as other older Nosy Komba where else ... or even more!

Pippy, Scratch, and Tux Math are the big stars of Jamaica, children are not afraid of anything, they try everything and find themselves to teach us how to play with Pippy! We've been Schooled! What better conditions to deploy OLPC?

• August Town Primary

August Town is a very different school of Providence ... the neighborhood is considered a bit "hotter", although we were very well received, it has the name of that ghetto, children are much more numerous and body professoriate is, it must be said, less enthusiastic and less active than the teachers of Providence.

On the other hand, if you look aroused emulation sessions XOs, either side of the children or their parents' side, one word comes to my mouth: POTENTIAL!

Yes yes, I know, it's virtually impossible to find an OLPC deployment where children are not receptive, been there, done that, we know kids love the XO ... But, I tell you, these kids will do wonders! They are different, they have an active and intelligent machine, they know how to use the Mesh Network better than we they ride on cars and physics are dancing characters after only ONE year of use!

In August Town children share the XO, more logistics, more organization and control are needed, having a team of teachers is a little passive for destabilizing the school must provide more effort than Providence .

But I think we all believe in! Share the XO is often criticized, I did not like this idea before spending a week working in these two schools! Finally, even if it is not considered the optimal situation, sharing a computer has many advantages, such as the birth of uniting teams of parents for their children and group work with the XO, which become regular. Obviously, this allows for the emergence of leaders, future teachers can be, of children helping children learn to learn ... thanks to Sugar, share and explore together, build teams and get organized. Who writes this sentence? That takes any photo? Who will get to that?

I'll stop there for now but I still bloggerai in the coming days, I will discuss Energy, teachers, activities, Kingston, GDP, Ministry, sponsors, GPS, Jamaican Brain Food, volunteers, and of course videos ... Nosy Komba in all this!

Stay Tuned!

Laura.

We have just learned with sadness the death of Jose Alanoca Laura Henry, a member of the Peruvian translation team for the project Aymara Sugar.

José Manuel had participated in the 2011 Sugar Camp Lima , co-organized by the Sugar Labs Peru and Escuelab .
He was an enthusiastic contributor to the location of the Sugar Learning Platform in Aymara .

The disappearance of José Henry is a great loss both to the Sugar community, worldwide, for the Aymara community. His work as a volunteer, was central to enable stakeholders - students, teachers and families - of the educational community Aymara, Peru, to appropriate educational tools developed by the Peruvian volunteers, particularly around teams "Somos Azucar" Escuelab.

Community OLPC France is following with interest for several years, the work around the OLPC / Sugar in Peru:

* Sugar Camp in Lima (Peru)

* Reading: the XO in schools in Peru

* Publication of " The XO computer in the classroom ", a French translation of the manual" The XO Laptop en el Aula "/" The XO Laptop in the Classroom "by Professor Salas Peruvian Sdenka Zobeida Pilcomayo.

Number 10 in the journal School Digital publishes a four-page article on the work we do for three years in Nosy Komba. The article (written by Bastien and reviewed by the entire association OLPC France) returns synthetically on the challenges and successes of this small deployment ... to read to learn in a few words the meaning we give to our work!

Read the article: Guerry http://lumiere.ens.fr/ ~ / a-computer-per-child-a-nosy-komba.html

OLPC recently released a major update of its deployment guide - the old version is still on the wiki .

This new version shows the different stages of OLPC deployment in detail and addresses all issues that must be asked before, during and after: the establishment of infrastructure (power, network, etc..) to that team (educational, technical, etc.). through customs matters and delivery.

When SugarCamp that we organized in Paris, we have "wikifié" this deployment guide, which was just a PDF. This first step allowed us to consider the second and most important: its translation into French ... and we are pleased to announce that this guide has been fully translated, and it is finally available for download in several formats:

• The OLPC deployment guide 2011 PDF
• The OLPC deployment guide 2011 in HTML in one page
• The OLPC deployment guide 2011 in HTML format, with one page per section , and the ability to leave comments

Photo: Rubén Rodríguez, Creative Commons 3.0 reconocimiento España. Source: http://quidam.cc/fotos/24-11-2011/sugarcamp-lima

"The inventors, artists, educators and citizens" are invited to participate in the 2011 Sugar Camp Lima on 18 and 19 November in Lima, Peru. Participants will work on the "Sugar learning platform designed for the XO laptop in translating content in Quechua and Aymara during a visit to hackers. Registrations are open. To learn more about this initiative, see the personal blog of Juan Arellano [link in Spanish].

Source: Peru: 'Sugar Camp Lima' Aims to Give Children a Learning Platform in Their Native Language

Furthermore, a first image of Sugar was created for this occation. It is presented and narrated in Spanish:

Presentacion Sugar by codewiz

Source: Sugar introduction (in Spanish, from Peru)

An ISO image is available here .

The event photos are available here .

Recent news from the OLPC project in the Southern Cone countries (Uruguay, Argentina) and Uruguay in particular, is rich, including the publication of two books and a video documentary recounting the experiences of setting implementation of the Plan Ceibal in primary schools and secondary schools in Uruguay, both in general education in special education, destined for students living with various disabilities.

Social mobilization for the Plan Ceibal

The first book is a compilation of a group of 30 authors from different countries, involved in social support project "One laptop per child" in Uruguay and in the world.

This project has several objectives:

Movilización social para Ceibal. Miradas nacional e internacional al contexto of proyectos of a computador por niño [Social mobilization for the Plan Ceibal. Look at the national and international projects "One laptop per child"]. Collective Cyranec Günther (ed.), Pablo Flores. Montevideo, 2010: UNESCO. 237 p.

* Source
* Download
* Summary

ICT and special education

The OEI (Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura / Organization of Latinos Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), has just published a study on the project CEIBAL of Uruguay:
Laptop, para la Educación Especial andamiaje. Guía práctica Computadores móviles en el currículo [The laptop, shoring for special education. Practical Guide to laptops in the curriculum]. Montevideo, 2011: UNESCO / CREATICA / Plan Ceibal. 307 p. ISBN: 978-92-9089-151-2.

* Source
* Download

The authors of this guide, Roxana Elizabeth Castellano and Rafael Montoya Sánchez, interested in a project under the auspices of Unesco, giving a broad theoretical and practical orientation for educators in their use of ICT. The authors draw on examples using laptops and their learning environment XO OLPC Foundation. Each of the eight units of this book has a central question, which is the guiding principle of teaching.

The first two units, a first thematic concern: "Building capacity of teachers and students":
* Unit 1. Laptop, intelligence and brain
* Unit 2. Research experiences crystallizing

The research program "Micro: an inclusive curriculum axis" devotes three to eight units to deepen the dialogue about the goals of different areas in the curriculum.

* Unit 3. Autonomy, and social skills sensomotricité
* Unit 4. Communication and Language
* Unit 5. Mathematics
* Unit 6. Domain knowledge of the natural and social environment
* Unit 7. Field of artistic knowledge
* Unit 8. Routes based on special educational needs

Can be found in this book illustrates the use of Sugar activities in curriculum development tailored to the needs of special education.

Documentary "A Laptop Per Child - Uruguay"

The Uruguayan-Austrian director Julieta Rudich made a documentary about the program CEIBAL Uruguay. Broadcast on Austrian television channel ORT, this documentary is available in English (with a transcript available here ).

Last September we did hand the tremendous work of the hands- on adaptation of a small telescope in the XO and its use for an introduction to astronomy. In the second SugarCamp, we were honored to receive Pierre Lena, co-founder of The hands-on, came to the point with us on this project.

Pierre Lena returned to what motivated this idea, the technical aspects of designing the mini-telescope and educational activities devised around. These are detailed in a presentation of Emmanuel Di Folco available online ( here for the English version.)

This project is original in more ways than one. First, because the hands-usually favors direct contact with nature, rather than its representation by means of an instrument. Then because it is planned to follow up this project in Uruguay, and these glasses may be widely distributed.

The discussion that followed the presentation addressed precisely how the hands-on OLPC and encouraged opportunities for collaboration between teachers at the country level and that of the planet - a challenge to the hand pulp and OLPC have in common, but the two initiatives which respond in very different ways.

The hands-on us generously donated a working prototype of these glasses, which was presented to Daniel Drake as a reward for his contributions in the second SugarCamp. Alex Kleider, voluntary OLPC, then bought five more glasses and found ways to adapt the support made by the hands-on fix for this new model to XO. If you want to get glasses of this type (for less than $ 65 + shipping), please write us .

These five glasses were given away as prizes at the summit in San Francisco in late October. The lucky recipients are: Sameer Verma for his organization of the summit, Daniel Drake and Gary Martin for their contributions to the activity Sugar Moon, Kevin Gordon, SJ Klein, OLPC Foundation to thank the support given to this summit, and Laura Reynal, a member of OLPC France, who will present these other glasses to the association.

It is also at the summit that the government of California stated that October 22 would now be a "day OLPC" (OLPC day). The telescope is listed next to the statement!

The statement "OLPC Day" (October 22) and the telescope of the hands-on XO

Below is the full video of the presentation by Pierre Lena:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xm2s3v

See also the interview with Alex Kleider small summit OLPC San Francisco:

Watch this space!

SugarCamp 2011 it was two days of conferences, exchanges, sharing, hacking and conviviality in the prestigious Digital Crossroads of Science City. Through the videos, reports and photos below, relive this unforgettable event as if you were there.

Day 1: Conferences

The first day was reserved for a set of lectures.

After a brief introduction of Lionel, first proposed a round table conference on OLPC deployments led by Bastien. Participated in this exchange, in order of appearance: Tony Anderson (on Rwanda), Christoph Derndorfer (for Uruguay), Jonathan Ragot (on Madagascar), Mitchell Seaton (for Philippines).

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xm2s8i

The second conference hosted by Pierre Lena Academy of Sciences presented the XO Telescope project to observe the Moon with the XO and a bezel adapted.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xm2s3v

The third lecture by Xavier, Jonathan and Stephen presented the project that led OLPC France for 3 years on the island of Nosy Komba off Madagascar.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xm2s6o

Earlier this afternoon, Sean showed a preview images of the new site SugarLabs.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xm2rzk

The first lecture of the afternoon concerned the proposed development activity around nutrition conducted in partnership between Danone and OLPC France. The conference was presented by Jean-Michel Antoine Nutrition Expert and Director Stefanie OLPC France.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xm2zmd

The last day of this conference offered an overview of the activity of creating multimedia "Your turn" developed in partnership between Carla Bruni and Sarkozy OLPC France. The conference was hosted by Bastien and Florent.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xm2zri

Day 2: Barcamp

The second day was a day of hacking where different participants working on different themes.

Daniel Drake, Raul Gutierrez and Simon Schampijer - Working hippocanvas

Daniel Drake, Raul Gutierrez and Simon Schampijer have refactored some code for Sugar no longer depend on a component called hippocanvas. This is a prerequisite to eventually use the graphics library GTK3, which is essential for the future of Sugar. Great strides have been made in the weekend, and the code will soon be included in Sugar.

For more information, see here

Christoph Derndorfer - gather content for Haiti

I spent the weekend working on content for the ongoing efforts in Haiti. Two tangible results: a page of information for parents and teachers and a small bundle. Xol with some photos of Paris under a free license on flickr [Note: Since, Bastien noted the pictures of Haiti available on Wikimedia Commons] . Mitch (eKindling project in the Philippines) made me some feedback on the information page, which I then sent the team in Haiti. About the bundle. Xol, I wanted to know how long it take to find appropriate photos and be packaged in an environment that can be used offline.

Bastien Guerry - format the OLPC déploiment Guide 2011

The OLPC wiki provides access to a PDF version of the Deployment Guide 2011 . I took this guide, I converted from PDF to plain text, structured text files and the sections with org-mode, and then stored these files in a git repository .

From this deposit, I cut the guide into small files (one for each section) and, hence, it is easy to export files or mediawiki. Odt; the first (mediawiki) will update the guide on the OLPC wiki (see this page ), the second (. odt) will distribute the work of translation. Experience has shown that it is easier for our members to translate from files. Odt only from a wiki.

As the git repository using org-mode, you can export to HTML, which is useful if you want to update and regularly publish the guide. The HTML version can also be accompanied by comments (using services like Disqus .)

I also showed how to export PDF file. Org allows for the syntax of Python code - using Org LaTeX and pygments (see for example this PDF .)

Florent Pigout - Help to start a new activity

I wrote a simple tool that helps to start business projects. This is based on the `paster create` and generates the basic structure of a business model based on predefined (pygtk, pygame ...)

Here's how to install the tool "creativity":

~$ git clone git://git.sugarlabs.org/creactivity/creactivity.git
~$ cd creactivity
~$ python setup.py develop

In Pipy: = pip install-U = creactivity should suffice.

Feel free to write me for more information and advice.

On the sidelines of SugarCamp, participants also observed a 1.75 XO prototype with a touchscreen.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xla6sa

You will also find below a collection of photos from the event.

Created with AdMarket's flickrSLiDR .

Finally, a big thank you to La Cité des Sciences for hosting us, the OLPC foundation and the AFUL for their support of this event.
A big thank you to the organizing team including Kevin, Bastien, Jonathan, Laura and Lionel.
And thank you to Pierre Varly and Mohammed Miloudi for editing videos.

The General Assembly of the Association, held October 15, 2011, allowed to take stock of actions. See the detailed presentation. In a year and for the modest sum of 8182 euros , the association OLPC France, which has 36 members, was able to conduct various actions grouped around four themes:

Support and Deployment

• : après quatre workshop de préparation , 9 personnes se sont relayées 3 mois sur place pour installer un accès Internet , travailler sur la pédagogie tout en rendant compte en temps réel des avancées. In partnership with the association of G Heart of the GSS deployment of XO laptops to Nosy Komba 2011 : After four workshop preparation , nine people took turns 3 months on site to install an internet access , work on pedagogy all by reporting real-time advanced. See photos of deployment in Nosy Komba .
• In partnership with Hand in the paste, support for experimenting with the XO Telescope

Contents

• French translation of the book "Xo in the class , "which could be used to Nosy Komba
• Development activity Let's play q ui can create animated stories and scripted four fables of La Fontaine, the Crow and the Fox
• Nutrino activity , in partnership with Danone, achieving operational content on nutrition issues
• Activity Madagascar aggregating Wikipedia content on this country
• Carpet removal of XO activity and disassembly pictures showing

Community

• Ubuntu party, Linux party, D-Day de l'ESG, Primevère, J2ML, CDDP, RWIC, RMLL, Open world forum . OLPC France has participated in numerous exhibitions and educational technology or related to open source: Educatec, Encounters of the ELM, Wireless BattleMesh Barcelona , Ubuntu party, party Linux, D-Day of the GSS, Primrose, J2ML, CDDP, RWIC, LSM, Open World Forum .
• Participation in the summit OLPC in San Francisco and Conozco Uruguay Round and link with communities including MapMaking Jam
• Support from Europe for OLPC deployment in Nosy Komba and OLPC organization for US Sugar Camp # 2 , which brought together 50 participants from 9 countries in five conferences.

Communication

• The website ( wiki ) totals 4 million visits a year as against 1,185,000 in 2009, and is very well referenced Bing and Google. It is the main access point (67% of visits) to information about OLPC France.
• , 426 tweets , 43 000 vidéos vues, 15 citations dans des articles de presse 140 tickets have been published on the blog , 234 publications on Facebook , 426 tweets , 43,000 videos viewed, 15 quotations in newspaper articles

Brief 2011: new active members, more projects than ever, a real focus on content and a true recognition of the foundation and communities.

For 2012, the association would like: always welcome more volunteers, identify new partners, accompanying project ideas, sustain content, accompanied by the rise of Nosy Komba, explore possibilities for a new driver, make a real website and continue to invest in social networks.

To support the projects of the association OLPC France, make a donation online click here .

It is through the AFUL , French Association of Free Software users, qu'OLPC France was able to organize the first SugarCamp in good physical conditions, and these conditions allowed us to make it a success.

This year again, OLPC France AFUL help fund the SugarCamp - a big thank you for this support and renewed confidence!

OLPC France WAS Able to SugarCamp organizes the first thanks to the sponsorship of AFUL , French speaking Libre Software Users' Association. This year again, is sponsoring the second AFUL SugarCamp - a Big Thank! year of construction for this support and trust.